I’m at the OB Where I Had My Daughters…

"Does anyone’s past NOT taste like metal?"

This is the third and final part of this ongoing “day in the life” outer monologue piece… BUT I hope it’s okay with you (my Word Nerd friends!) if I take tomorrow “off”, as I am currently recovering from a liver biopsy procedure this week, as well as a few other invasive hospital moments that have been stressing me out.

I will make sure to link any shares about those procedures here next week- if I don’t write about them more extensively down the road- and you can also check out any over-sharing on @catchingbreaths tomorrow too.

BUT……

I’m also excited to announce that starting next Wednesday: My long-running column, ‘Life In The Grey’ will be returning on CF News Today under their parent company BioNews!

What does this mean here?

Why write a weekly column there after taking nearly 3 years off, and return now?

What will make that Wednesday tradition different from the [soon-to-be] Monday - Friday written promise for any supportive readers on Substack?

Firstly, ‘Life In The Grey’ will be the place where I write about illness with much less prose and a lot more clarity.

For some, this is refreshing when trying to understand a complicated disease, new test results, or any other sort of updates I save for my long time Op-Ed. (At the time I paused a few years ago, I already had over 120 columns printed. Not surprising but still… Whoa.)

You can only read those words on CF News Today - though I’ll share the links mid-week on Substack, so you don’t miss out, if you like the reminder!

However…

My Substack is where I’m able to share on all sorts of topics (not exclusively sickness).

This matters enormously to me as well, and is completely thanks to the help of anyone who is a subscribing reader.

I not only have been giving away more full-ride scholarships to anyone who asks than ever (all they have to do is ask)- because I know subscribing Word Nerds help make that giving possible- But I continue to justify the vast case-load because of the love in this space.

If I’m being VERY honest…

Substack is not and can never be about stability or earnings; Business sense or incentive… But it IS in the sense it leaves a paper trail of love for the people I love.

It helps me give to those who can’t normally subscribe to other Substacks and have shared how much they appreciate it (YOU should be proud that your giving has led to real direct-messages and special gratitudes from readers who are in the same position I am. Most of us don’t have an extra $5 a month to go around… So knowing that we are all giving back in any way is one of the greatest gifts there is!)

Moreover, Substack helps me to archive this “ongoing legacy” that I HOPE is the continual memoir project I’ve started and plan to continue to work towards.

The goal is to eventually get the streamlined manuscript to an agent or publisher (as someone who’s sent queries almost all of her life and has a large folder titled “No”, this is easier said than done”)…

But I’m almost done competing the memoir and want to hold out hope that it can be my first published novel/novella also done in print.

Of Note: All of my previous works have been published myself… marketed myself… and only exist online. I hate talking numbers, but purely because I think a lot of us don’t recognize how nominal the fiscal “reward” of an e-book can be, most made a total of like $60. So, as I’m sure most writers know, we unfortunately have to be in this field for every single reason other than our pockets.

The same goes for Substack… Although, every little penny matters in my book, and every little bit of book we can exist within hopefully lives on long after us.

As someone who prefers to hold her books, and skip the surplus of blue light plaguing us at night - I wholeheartedly understand those who aren’t single-handedly motivated by digital books alone… Even IF I do plan to see some of my partially-shared fiction works- like the dystopian novella, ‘Senseless’, I teased multiple chapters of recently- in the near future too, whether self-pub’ed or otherwise.)

Long story short? (This ‘column’ written within a column?)

Next week, we will embark on a new system.

Wednesday is ‘Life In The Grey’, and as many Tuesdays- Fridays [minus that mid-week hump day] as I can will continue to be deeply personalized, varied, longer, or exploratory pieces here (as well as, hopefully, more interviews and articles on fascinating friends and favorites!)

A lot of people write once or twice a month on Substack for paying subscribers, so my neurotic self is over-doing the best-that-I-can as perpetual thanks to you but:

I take your support and presence to heart.

If you’re not sick of me: I hope that getting a little piece of writing Monday - Friday “here, there, and everywhere” is a way of remembering that… we all just want to be remembered?

We all just want to connect…

And online friendships ARE real.

PS. I saw that one of my favorite writers reads her work on Substack, so that those who prefer that modality, get a book-on-tape of her cadence.

This is of course not accessible for Deaf loves of mine (who hopefully can tolerate my verbose scribbles as they are), but I’m wondering:

Would having one Substack piece per week include a “book on tape” audio be preferable to anyone out there?

I’m at the OBYGN where I had my daughters…

Except I didn’t realize it was the same office until now.

You’d think I’d remember when I Googled, but with specialists for literally every organ of my body (a system that’s strongly eroding medicine and those accide-belittled within it), it’s harder than you’d think to keep track of every familiar feeling practice.

I had looked up this office like one would a yellowing Yellow Page: a speed search, a quick check of the hours they’re open, a shrug, and a call on my caption app.

I already have an OB surgeon for the recent multi-ovarian cyst operation I had. This appointment is different, simpler, “civilian”. I just need someone to follow my regular care in a long term fashion, closer to our new house - so that I can have an ordinary cool OB to be my B.

But as I sit in the parking lot of this building I didn’t know I’d know, I’m flooded with memories from nearly twenty years ago. The midwife I loved so much who helped me through both pregnancies. The hyperemesis that made me green instead of “glowing” for all 9 months; Zofran and IVs and round and round the carousel.

I was a zombie until they were delivered and then- almost the second my hormones adjusted and the pushing was done- I could eat again.

Meals never tasted so good.

But the taste in my mouth while surprise confronted with this building is not one I’d expected for an “easy appointment”; A presumed 2 on the pain scale of physical days.

Now, I’m blinking at an 8 instead and realizing the taste is probably something akin to the real-life-science behind grief: Metal.

‘Maybe it’s metal?’

“A metallic taste in the mouth can be a common physiological response to grief and loss.”

The walls before me held as much winsomeness and whimsy as they do wounds from my past.

(Does anyone’s past NOT taste like metal?)

I’ve been lucky to live this far. To have felt love in both the good and bad forms (there are both). And to stare at old traumas and try to tamp down the taste of alloy on my tongue.

I’m obsessed with a piece of writing by Toews that includes the quote: “There are people who want you to live… so it would seem then that you have enemies who love you.”

Sometimes we can’t be who others need us to be… but sometimes we also can’t stop trying at the failure of being.

I go inside and talk about things that are comfortably trite and routine.

I think I’m in perimenopause. I’m told women have to take a natural vitamin for 3 months before insurance will even consider any other interventions to help with symptoms. I’m okay doing so, and make mental plans to get the Meno-mix at the store later when I leave, but I can’t help but keep ruminating on two very real findings that relate to being a woman in healthcare:

One is that: “The reduction of oestrogen in post-menopausal women may make them more prone to learning and memory problems that are related to Alzheimer's disease.”

And the other is that: “According to a Stanford Medicine study, humans experience two rapid periods of aging, around the ages of 44 and 60. These molecular changes may explain why some people notice sudden signs of aging, such as wrinkles, sagging skin, and muscle and joint pain.”

I wonder when the first bitchslap of age will hit or if it already has- all the while knowing society will blame ME for biology that impacts all of us anyways. And I rage internally about the lack of integration of information and intelligence relating to the very real dangers of hormone treatment in half the population who is left, often, to fend for themselves; Accepting potentially worse outcomes than any of us have earned.

Maybe we won’t remember the inequity by the time dripping estrogen takes our memories anyways?

I remember this building so well. The prenatal appointments, scared and drowning… but also, definitively certain that I was going to love this infant with everything I have and even everything I wasn’t.

We make plans to ultrasound a lump in my breast that’s been there for ages and is definitely not a concern (but also doesn’t flux with cycles like a cyst should so needs a watchful eye). I know it’s not a concern, but appreciate the newness of any doctor who thinks a woman worthy of a watchful eye. (Is it a surprise that she’s a woman?)

I am not as sexist as I sound, by the way. The most impactful surgeon of my life, to date, was a man… But one who had such old-school practices that he made me feel like he remembered every little detail about my own life as I did his.

I love the nurse practitioner overall and I exit with labs drawn, supplements in my future, and a boob check I’ll push off for months because I have bigger fish to fry.

(I don’t know yet, at the time of this “civilian appointment”, that they’ll become worried about my hormones and ovaries - hello curveball- and I’ll be waiting on that new unknown soon enough. More on that later, when there is anything to even report.)

Knowing too much about your body can be a bad thing.

I know of so many things that aren’t concerns, on top of the unnameables that can be. I know the two large kidney stones that luckily have bought some land and are building property; unmoved means less worry. (“Stay there forever little buddies,” I think.) I know of a nodule in my lung that isn’t impacting, and a cyst in my liver that’s different from the less simple things within the murky waters of that organ.

Congruently, I know a lot of less-simple and more worrisome things that I’m waiting on (and waiting on and waiting on)… Always waiting to get worse so that we can somehow get better.

Simple is a good thing in medicine but an insult to humans. Phrases like “fish to fry” irk me because I love fish. And, most of all, I wonder if I’ll ever move forward from a past that stays the same.

I’m finding that shadows on scans and ‘watchful eyes’ worry me a little bit less than they ever did before.

My mouth might always taste the tangy metal of grief…

But my chest feels warm with something else.

I think it’s called hope? Maybe it’s just waiting?

I’ll let you know when I find out.

PART THREE (Part Two).

Fini!

See you next week!